Sunday, April 27, 2014

Tests of Christian Life

“Blessed is he that watcheth.”- Revelation 16:15

“We die daily,” said the apostle. This was the life of the
early Christians; they went everywhere with their lives in their hands. We are
not in this day called to pass through the same fearful persecutions: if we
were, the Lord would give us grace to bear the test; but the tests of Christian
life, at the present moment, though outwardly not so terrible, are yet more
likely to overcome us than even those of the fiery age. We have to bear the
sneer of the world-that is little; its blandishments, its soft words, its oily speeches,
its fawning, its hypocrisy, are far worse. Our danger is lest we grow rich and
become proud, lest we give ourselves up to the fashions of this present evil
world, and lose our faith. Or if wealth be not the trial, worldly care is quite
as mischievous. If we cannot be torn in pieces by the roaring lion, if we may
be hugged to death by the bear, the devil little cares which it is, so long as
he destroys our love to Christ, and our confidence in him. I fear me that the
Christian church is far more likely to lose her integrity in these soft and
silken days than in those rougher times. We must be awake now, for we traverse
the enchanted ground, and are most likely to fall asleep to our own undoing,
unless our faith in Jesus be a reality, and our love to Jesus a vehement flame.
Many in these days of easy profession are likely to prove tares, and not wheat;
hypocrites with fair masks on their faces, but not the true-born children of
the living God. Christian, do not think that these are times in which you can
dispense with watchfulness or with holy ardour; you need these things more than
ever, and may God the eternal Spirit display his omnipotence in you, that you
may be able to say, in all these softer things, as well as in the rougher, “We
are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”